MAY BULLET JOURNAL PLAN WITH ME 2022 _ habit tracking & self-care

It's time for Mae's Plan With Me, and I personally am feeling like it's time to go back to a root love of mine, craft paper. If you've been following the channel for a while, then you know, it's been a minute since we've played around with craft paper, and that ends today. Thank you to Squarespace for sponsoring today's video. Squarespace is an all-in-one platform for designing beautiful websites, more on them in a little bit. In case you don't have it, I do have a PDF that has 50 bullet journal spread ideas for you. If you want to get access to it, you just have to submit your email in the link in the description box below, and in doing so, you'll also be part of my Monday morning weekly newsletter. And on that note, let's dive into the planning. We're getting right into the craft paper goodness by pasting in two giant scraps with some glue tape. I'll have both the craft paper that I'm using and the glue tape linked in the description box below, along with links to everything else I use to create my spreads. I don't know what it is about a piece of ripped craft paper in my journal, but it immediately eases my concerns about creating a beautiful spread, because I find that craft paper makes any spread so forgiving. I think in general, whenever you're pasting things into your journal, it takes on a more scrapbook-like look that welcomes imperfections, awkward spacing, and misspelling. I just love it. The right page is a spot for May's calendar that I outlined with the fine-tip side of a black Tombow dual brush marker. The marker makes the calendar pop out a bit better than if I did this solely with my Sharpie esh gel pen. And on the left page is where I opted to create my go-to habit trackers. I make habit trackers every month, as you know, but for May, I really want to focus on maintaining healthy habits just in general. It's always harder to keep up with them during the winter, so I really feel this energization from spring to stay committed, particularly with meditating. I've been really off my game with it, but it is one of those things that does make me feel so good once I finish a session. So it's worth prioritizing. When I'm trying to ease back into meditation, I find YouTube guided meditations to be my go-to. And if meditation isn't your thing, you can even opt for stretching or yoga videos to make it a more active experience. I've talked a lot about yoga with Adrienne on this channel, but one of the reasons I love her yoga practices so much is because they feel like mini therapy sessions at times. Adrienne just has this very comforting energy to her. The spread felt like it was missing something, so I whipped out my white jelly roll pen to sprinkle in some white doodles against the kraft paper, and I think those little bright sprinkles made a huge difference. I like the doodle add-ins because it's such a spontaneous process. You can't anticipate where you might need a doodle until you're looking at a spread and feel like there are gaps in certain areas. It's fun to try and solve the puzzle by experimenting with lines and stars until my brain is satisfied. If you're loving what you're seeing of today's spreads, then, after watching this video, of course, you're going to want to check out the photos I posted on my website, caitlindasilva.com, so you can easily reference your favorites when you're doing some planning of your own. Fun fact, caitlindasilva.com is run using Squarespace, an all-in-one platform that has made creating and maintaining a blog such an easy process for me. I'm talking a wide selection of professional-looking templates to choose from, like this one and this one. Ooh la la! I'm talking slideshows for images, dividers, and clickable buttons. The list goes on and on, folks, so if one of your goals is to start building an online presence for you or your business, then Squarespace is ready for you to get started. You can check out squarespace.com today for a free trial and use the URL squarespace.com slash caitlinscorner to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. In April's plan with me, I had created a really fun office desk dashboard that creatively housed various lists for April, so I wanted to continue that trend with May's layout. Instead of an office desk, I decided to make my craft paper a shelf for some book doodles. Again, I'm using my Tombow Dual Brush Pen Fine Point to trace over my pencil sketches of what I wanted to see on this shelf. In addition to some book stack doodles, I also drew a photo frame and a plant. In April's dashboard, I added color through pops of pink, but for this one, I wanted to have a bit more color happening, so I brought in some pinks, oranges, yellows, and greens to give the layout some extra life with more dual brush pens and pencil crayons. On the bottom craft paper, I divided each page into two sections for a total of four areas for lists, one for books to read, one for things to learn more about, podcast episodes I loved listening to, and YouTube videos that inspired me. One of the books I'm most looking forward to releasing in May is Emily Henry's Booklovers. Emily Henry is the author of Beach Read and People We Met on Vacation, two books I'd highly recommend if you haven't read them already. They're perfect spring-summer novels for your TBR list. And ever since I read the synopsis for Booklovers, I have been counting down the days to its release so stay tuned, I'm sure I'll be sharing some of my thoughts about it in a future vlog and on my Instagram stories. I think one of the reasons why I ended up loving this spread so much and April's dashboard so much is it's finding a way to make something simple, like just basic lists, and turn them into something visually stimulating. In April's layout, I felt like that was very intricate with that desk setup, but this feels like a really approachable way to do it. A large portion of this spread is very basic, but the doodles on top bring it to life and give it this warmth. It just makes me really excited to use it. The next spread is a great option if you want to play around with pasting papers into your journal without covering large chunks of your notebook, because I know that's not for everyone. I simply am pasting in four rectangle strips of differing sizes around the two pages and layered with some pieces of grid washi tape from Amanda Rach Lee's shop. The left page is a page that I'll be filling out throughout May. It's a ta-da list. What's a ta-da list, you may ask? Well, unlike a to-do list where you write down things you have to still complete, a ta-da list is ta-da, a spot to celebrate the things you already have done. So throughout May, if I complete a task that brought some satisfaction, I'll jot it down. Then at the end of the month, I'll have a list of things I've accomplished that I can reflect back on. So often we get caught up on what we still need to do instead of giving ourselves a pat on the back for what we did complete. And this is just a way to encourage that in my journal. On the top of the right page, I wrote down a quote that says, if your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete. And I chose this quote specifically because this is a spread geared towards self-care. And I think self-care is a very self-compassionate act towards ourselves, especially in times when we're really feeling it and we need a little extra comfort. Next week, I'm planning on releasing a video sharing some unconventional self-care tips. So if you don't want to miss out on it, which I don't recommend you do miss out on it, hit subscribe and tap the notification bell so you're notified once it's live. The star of the show for these two pages isn't a star at all. It's a triangle. I knew this was going to be a pretty minimal weekly spread layout. So I felt like the triangle piece of craft paper could help deceive the eye into thinking that this is a more intricate spread than it actually is. Is it working? Are you fooled? Let me know in the comments below. I divided the pages into seven sections. So each day of the week has a spot for some planning. However, comma, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday are definitely on the smaller side. So we're keeping our fingers crossed that hopefully those will magically be less planning heavy days. And so that the triangle wasn't a complete waste of space, I drew a triangle within it to be a spot for me to write down any main focuses or big reminders for the week ahead. And I finished the spread off by just adding some more doodled accents. One of my favorite things I did on this spread was using the fine point of a brown tan Tombow dual brush marker to create those wavy lines. Just gives a little something something. How did you feel about the return to craft paper? I personally am feeling extra excited to spend some time in my planner this month. I also love to know like always which spread in this plan with me was your favorite. Thanks again to Squarespace for sponsoring today's video. Don't forget to click the link in the description box below to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Like the video if you enjoyed it and hit subscribe if you haven't already. Both those things helped me tremendously on my creative journey on this channel. I'm wishing you the best with your May planning. And if you make anything that you want to share with me, don't be afraid to tag me on posts on Instagram or TikTok or Pinterest. I'm in many places. All the links down below. I'll see you all soon with a new one. Until then, bye guys.